


something happening somewhere

by gsparkle



Series: fast forward [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Cave-In, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-15 21:42:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14798498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gsparkle/pseuds/gsparkle
Summary: Steve, Maria, and one inconvenient cave-in.





	something happening somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: I have you shoved against the wall but now I can’t stop looking at your mouth
> 
> title: dancing in the dark, bruce springsteen & the e street band

When the cave-in stabilizes, it’s just Steve, Commander Hill, and a pile of boulders between them and the rest of the team. Natasha’s voice sounds far away as she yells through the miniscule chinks in the new wall of rock.

“We’re fine,” Maria calls back. This is a lie--in the paltry light of their lanterns, he can see that blood oozes from a gash at her hairline, and she’s favoring her right arm--but Steve’s never going to be the one to tell someone how they feel, especially not Maria Hill. Instead, he begins a careful inspection of the boulders, searching for stones to loosen. The space they occupy isn’t all that tight, maybe ten feet square, but oxygen won’t last forever. He picks a rock that doesn’t seem to be holding much else up, pulls hard, and reveals--more rock. In unison, they sigh.

“We’re too far underground to reach SHIELD,” Maria says, seemingly more to herself than to Steve. She chews on her thumb as she paces back and forth along the wall, neatly stepping around Steve at each pass as if he were just one more boulder. At last, she steps back up to the wall again and instructs the team on the other side of the wall. “You’ll have to go all the way back up and call HQ. Tell them to bring a drill.”

They have to listen hard to hear the retreat of boots back down the rough cave floors. “That’s going to be at least two hours,” Steve points out, peeling down the top layer of his tac suit and tying the sleeves around his waist. It’s not stuffy down here yet, but it will be. “What are we going to do to kill time?”

Maria, in the middle of doing the same, pauses and gives him a long, sharp look. “What does that mean?”

“Like, I don’t know,” Steve fumbles, feeling that he’s put a foot wrong. “I don’t suppose you carry a deck cards on that utility belt?” He smiles, tentative, and the edges of her shoulders relax the slightest, tiniest bit. Thirty seconds later, he figures out why: “Oh! _Oh._ You thought I was propositioning you? I--no, I mean, we’re working, but maybe later, uh, that is.” _Jesus fucking wept,_ says the voice in his head that sounds perpetually like Bucky. He sighs. “No.”

“Has anyone ever told you,” Maria begins after another long look, “That you’re absolutely _terrible_ at talking to women?”

“Oh,” Steve says, trying to smother his mortification with brightness and succeeding only in rambling, “Many times. Godawful. But I can’t talk to men, either--” _Stop talking!_ “Um. I mean.” He looks around desperately for something, _anything_ else to do, and seizes on the rock wall. The sooner they dig themselves out of this place, the sooner he can pretend that this encounter never happened. Probably he should say something to her, but she’s still studying him with an indecipherable expression, so he picks one of the larger rocks at the top and starts working.

After a minute, Maria falls in line next to him, widening the opening he’s created. This isn’t surprising: he knew from the minute they met on the Helicarrier that she was strong, capable, never too full of her rank to get down in the trenches. They work slow but steady, soon both covered in a fine layer of sweat and dust, a sheen that makes her pale arms glow in the fluorescent lantern’s light. A conversation of sorts crops up, mainly centered on whatever joke or story can be said in between huffs of breath.

“For the record,” Maria says some time later, pointing out a particularly large slab of stone for Steve to pull on, “I don’t date SHIELD employees. It’s--easier.”

“Of course,” Steve says, because he remembers the way gossip about Peggy snaked through the camp, leaving a venomous trail in its wake. Her brilliance and bravery had been infuriatingly irrelevant to so many of the men whose lives she’d saved through strategy and sheer force of will. And he’s sure Maria experiences the same scrutiny and judgement, because as much as the world has changed, it’s still frustratingly the same. “People are the worst sometimes, aren’t they?”

“Truly terrible,” she agrees, but there’s something different about her face in the bluish light, hesitation tucked in the corner of her lips. “It’s just--you said _maybe later_ and, I mean, you’re _you_ , but I still have rules, so.” She pauses, closes her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose. “We’re running out of oxygen in here, right? That’s why I’m word vomiting?”

Steve laughs and heaves the enormous slab. “Now who’s bad--at talking--to people,” he grunts as he staggers across the tiny space to their growing pile of rubble. He’s just dropping it to the floor when he hears a telltale trickle of rocks sliding. “Maria, look out!”

He gets to her just in time, plastering them both against the cave wall just as the rocks fall exactly where she was not a second earlier. For a minute, it’s all he can do to gulp huge lungfuls of air, panic and adrenaline still flash flooding his system. Only when Maria, crushed between him and the wall, mumbles, “Rogers, you’re squishing me,” does he lean back.

“Right,” he says, chest still heaving. “Sorry.” The lantern’s been tipped over, casting shadows at sharp angles over Maria’s high cheekbones and straight nose. This close, the arctic blue of her eyes reminds him of forget-me-nots and violets and cornflowers, flowers he used to reproduce in his sketchbook because he couldn’t afford the real things. “I, um--” She looks up at him through her eyelashes, and he thinks he’s been caught staring, but then he realizes that her eyes are not on his own, but on his mouth. And once he realizes that, well, he can’t help but stare at hers.

“We,” begins Maria in this wonderfully befuddled voice, “I--oh, what the hell,” and then she’s pushing up onto her toes and her lips are on his, fleetingly, before she pulls back. “Sorry, I should’ve asked--”

“Consider this a yes,” Steve says, drawing her mouth back up to his and kissing her back, carefully slanting his mouth over hers. It doesn’t matter that he can taste the cave dust on her tongue or that the lantern is shining directly into his eye, because Maria is just as firm and decisive and exacting as she is everywhere else, and though he usually only says this about fighting, he really could do this all day.

He’s got one hand in her hair and she’s running both hands down his abs when a distant noise pricks his ear. “I think they’re coming back,” he says on half a ragged breath. Maria stiffens and Steve immediately steps away, locating the lantern and picking his careful way across the newly fallen rocks to the wall to give her time to collect herself. The wall is thinner in places now, and when Steve punches at a smaller rock experimentally, it falls outward, taking a few others with it to open a larger hole. He can definitely hear the tramp of boots coming their way.

Maria comes up beside him, tac suit zipped back up and not a hair out of place. “We’re never talking about this,” she declares, but there’s a smile lurking behind the tone.

“About what?” Steve asks; later, though, as they disembark the quinjet back at base, he leans over and whispers, “If you ever want to make an exception to that rule, though, let me know.”


End file.
